One crafty bitch...

May 30, 2004

What's a holiday weekend for if not to brave the airport crowds and visit your friends in So Cal? I decided to bring a hank of sock yarn as my portable project. This gold and yellow skein is a bit heavier than what I've been using for socks and I bumped the needle size up to a 1! That's a 3 for most folks. This yarn is from last month's Maryland S&W, purchased from the vendor where I got last year's blue faced leicester. Of course I can't recall the name and didn't remember to bring the tag from the skein. The twist of this yarn is quite tight and looks a bit structurally, like Koigu. It's very soft and yummy to knit up, and I kind of remember it may have some blue faced leicester in it. It was from an outside tent, first row left by the entrance...anyone? I'll check when I get home tomorrow if anyone really wants to know.

Click for amazing progress.

On a Gigi note, has anyone used Schachenmayr Princess? I really want to make BonneMarie's Gigi right now, this very minute...you know how that is...I love the Cotton Fleece but I've got a little credit at Elann to use up. Princess would be close enough gauge-wise and has great colors and what looks like a nice drape and sheen to make Princess Gigi a hot little number. Anyone use or heard of Princess before? I bow to your collective wisdom...

May 26, 2004

Usually the mail doesn't inspire much enthusiasm, but as I rolled up to the mailbox the other day I just KNEW it was a special delivery. The wonderful Emma and I exchanged odds and ends and a Royal Mail delivery just arrived in California! I know what you're thinking, California is chock full of princesses, Royal Mail shouldn't be that much of an oddity. But just check out what's nestled amongst my bills and junk mail...

Click for fun.

Emma has kindly sent me some judiciously aged Pingouin Fresque in gorgeous lavendery eyelash. I immediately thought sexy tank and shrug ensemble. Then I did a tiny little swatch and this yarn has such a lovely drape, the cardie thought crept into my little noggin...more to follow...

There has been a bit of progress on the Falaise black cardie, but it's too late for photographing black yarn, just trust me on the progress.

May 23, 2004

No it's not your imagination, I am indeed working on TWO black sweaters simultaneously. Not the best for blog pix but exceedingly wearable.

After finishing a spate (okay 2) of summery type tops, I thought it was high time to return to my cardie roots. Having found ten skeins of black Phildar Falaise on ebay last month (plus forcing my sister to buy the other lot of ten--heh), I settled down to figuring out what the hell to do with it. I'd heard all about the beauty of sproingy Falaise from said sister, among others. This was the yarn called for in the Becky Wannabe sweater ( Claudia's version here--remember this one?). It's been quite nice to knit with (no aching hands worries from lack of give here), though it splits a tad on on me. That just means I must actually look at my knitting now and again to make sure I've grabbed the entire piece of yarn.

I'm making my cardie from the top down with raglan sleeves. I've got 10 skeins of yarn, which should be fine for a cardie, but you never know. I may need to SOS for all your leftovers for those striped accents at the bottom of the sweater. Fingers crossed. I began the pattern fiddling by measuring my favorite cardie in order to replicate those dimensions as closely as possible. I pulled out my invaluable Knitting from the Top (Barbara G. Walker), swatched my yarn, broke out the calculator and cast on. I've ripped out twice already as I didn't like the raglan increase I'd chosen, but I've got a winner now and have about 2.5" of sproingy goodness to show for it. I've also found the Phildar Falaise is almost as punnable as Onde! Joy!

May 19, 2004

Do you want to be a goddess? Well you can either take this goddess assessment quiz, or you can knit up a Goddess of your own. After seeing Rachael's lovely Goddess version, I had to have one. I went to the stash bullpen and came up with some suitable yarn. For those who want the lowdown on this top:

May 17, 2004

I've been working on my "Make it Up As I Go Along" alpaca sweater when it came time to make sleeves. I pulled out Maggie Righetti's "Sweater Design in Plain English" (hereby referred to as SD), to try to figure it out. Now this just happens to be the reference book I own, but I'm sure there are many fabulous sources out there. SD pages 256 to 262 deal with planning set in sleeves. Also, I made sketches to show what I did for my sweater, sorry I've got no neato graphics software so I hope you can read my scrawl.

Underarm Curve Planning:Now I'd already made my front and back by looking at other knitting patterns and eyeballing my sweater and decided to bind off 5 stitches/4 stitches/1 stitch to make the underarm curve of my sweater body. (My gauge is 5 stitches to the inch.) I already KNOW that my sleeve underarm curve needs to match this body underarm curve. I also KNOW that my armhole depth is 7.5". See armhole depth sketch.

How deep should the sleeve cap be?:SD shows that the sleeve cap must be shorter than the armhole depth by the amount of the "flat part of the top of the shoulder". SD gives this standard, arbitrary measurement as 3" for an adult sweater. This means the top of the sleeve cap (that last bit of stitches you bind off at the end of the sleeve is about 3" worth of stitches). This flat 3" is centered at the shoulder seam, so you'll have 1.5" in front of the shoulder seam and 1.5" behind the shoulder seam. What's that got to do with sleeve cap depth? My armhole is 7.5" long and my sleeve cap will need to be 1.5" SHORTER than the armhole depth for the curved sleeve cap to fit into the straight armhole. SD has a drawing on page 258. My sketch is here.

Figuring sleeve cap Decreases:Okay what do you know so far? I know I will be start decreasing the sleeve to match what I did on the underarm of the body of my sweater, namely 5 stitches/4stitches/1 stitch on each side. I know I want to end up with about 3" worth of stitches at the end of the sleeve. I'm making short sleeves, so I measured my bicep where I wanted the sleeve to fall. My measurement is 12" at 5 stitches per inch is 60 stitches plus a few stitches for ease and seams, I came up with 66 stitches to cast on. I decided I wanted to make my sleeves 1.5" long before beginning the sleeve cap decreases.

Cast on 66 stitchesWant to end up with about 15 stitchesMy body armhole is decreased 5 sts/4sts/1st on each side which is 20 stitches total66 sts minus 15 sts to remain and 20 sts from the first decreases leaves 31 stitches to get rid of in the cap.

SD gives various methods for figuring out row gauge and finagling those decreases. In my case I figured I'd have about 5" to get rid of those 31 stitches and my row gauge is 7 rows per inch (35 rows to work with). If I lose about 1 stitch per row I'll be just about right. I simply cast on 66 stitches, knit straight for 1.5" and began casting off for my armhole curve. 5 stitches each side once, 4 stitches each side once and 1 stitch each side until the sleeve cap was about 5" long. I kept measuring the cap against the pinned together armhole to make sure it was fitting and the curve was working out ok. I wanted my sleeve cap to have a more curve at the top than a flat 3" and bound off 2 sts at the beginning of the next four rows then bound off the remaining 14 stitches for my flat 3". Since I'd been measuring it to the armhole during the knitting of the thing, I knew it would fit and pinned it in (photo above) as proof. See sketch for sleeve diagram.

See, not so hard to make sleeves. You just need to remember to make the caps shorter by that crazy flat shoulder factor. I really helped me to make sketches and think of the big armhole picture. Good luck.

May 14, 2004

No more fuzzy yarn!

Just to show that I’ve not been resting on my fuzzy mohair, navel showing, boobal exposing laurels, I’ve been knitting on my more modest alpaca creation. This has been a pretty easy knit so far, but as many of you know, knitting with black yarn gets more difficult at night, so progress is slowish. Also, I’m making the pattern up and often don’t WRITE DOWN all the little details. When I pick up the piece again I wonder what the hell I was doing. When I’m done with the back piece, I’ll be pulling out my Sweater Design in Plain English to work out some sleeve caps. I may also dig around to find some of those hideously expensive pattern-making textbooks sitting out in the garage. Sleeve caps can be tricky and I need all the help I can get. I’m planning on making cap sleeves, maybe a picot hem and eyelets, maybe not.

Since black yarn is boring to photograph, I pulled some fuchsia cotton from under the bed, still in it’s Smiley’s bag. When I was working in NY last year, our apartment in Kew Gardens was walkable to Smiley’s, and you guessed it, I walked it a fair bit. It was far enough to be great exercise and close enough for convenience...I so greatly admired Rachael’s version of the Goddess Tank from VK, I’m meeee tooooing her. Rachael wore her tank to the Oakland Knit Together last month and I do believe in addition to putting the Goddess idea into my head, fellow participant Sharlene bought the most gorgeous bit of crimson yarn at ArticlePract for her version in production.

My version is fuchsia 50/50 cotton/acrylic, Filatura Lanarota Luxor DK from Holland. I’d never heard of this yarn before, but it was inexpensive and a cotton blend (100% cotton is a little heavy for my taste). Gauge is off, but what’s new there. I swatched in the round, figured my gauge and re-jiggered the pattern to fit said gauge and me. I’m also shortening it a bit as my knitted fabric has much more body than the version in the magazine, which would bunch up unattractively instead of draping over the hip area. I’m knitting the body in the round up to the start of the neck opening, so we’ll soon see if my calculations were more accurate than the hell of my sister’s lacy cotton swatch debacle (her back piece was 6” wider than anticipated--she’s not a big girl--that’s craziness)! Fingers crossed and blessings to the gauge fairy.

May 12, 2004

Well that's not from the cardie collection!

Grace is done and we can call her short and sweet. Short in two ways, it took no time to make and it's SHORT! I decided not to lengthen it because I didn't think I had enough yarn, and I think it looks fine short. Cute with low rise jeans and such. I will wear a shirt underneath, even though it's soft and lush kid mohair, it's still mohair and I don't want that next to my skin. Another reason to wear a shirt underneath, we can use the Wendy-ism here, there's a bit too much front porch showing for my puritanical ways. (Quit laughing--I can still hear you).

Project Specs:Pattern: Knitty.com "Grace"Yarn: I can't recall too much, it was a gift. It was called Bunji Down (or something like that) and is kid mohair from Art Fibers, 3 skeins, in gray.

I found this yarn very pleasant to work with and the resulting knitted fabric has a very nice drape. It is very difficult to photograph the color accurately, but the color change is really quite subtle and fun to anticipate in the knitting up. I am still toying with sewing a strip of white ribbon over the collar seam to hide it a bit. I guess it's only really noticeable to me, but it's such and easy fix. I worried that when I sewed the snaptape in with the machine, the knitted fabric would get pulled out of shape by the feed dogs of the machine. I sidestepped this potential pitfall by putting strips of tissue paper between the feed dogs and the sweater. This bit of fashion school knowledge worked great and no puckers were seen. Bottom line - fun knitting!

May 05, 2004

I've been working on a top down V-neck sweater from some fabulous kid mohair gifted to me, but I've been strangely reluctant to work on this project. Do I like this yarn? Yes. Do I like this design? Yes. Is this sweater interesting to knit or would it be interesting to wear? No. I may have found the root of this problem. I've decided to rip and make Grace from the current Knitty. I think this will be a good use of this yarn and this design makes my heart beat a bit faster than a boring old pulli. Of course this could just be the blush of first infatuation, but it looks like this sweater will be done before those hots wear off.

It's hard to put down...

Previously I've shown you the beautiful yarn I wrangled to Cali from Maryland, now I'd like to show you the beautiful implement that fit so nicely into my baggage. This is my new Lucette! What the hell is a lucette you ask? This implement makes a type of cord. I plan on making cord with the lucette rather than knitting i-cord, in future. I've got cord needs approaching with every completed row of my alpaca short sleeved sweater. I've got a nice under boob eyelet row begging for a jauntily colored cord accent. Want the low down on my lucette? This redheaded beauty is from the nice folks at The Rouge Lucette and made from Royal Peroba (origin Southern Brazil). I can't really convey the contentment of handling this beautiful wooden implement. Imagine, there was a whole table full of lucettes all made from different, gorgeous woods. I KNEW mine needed to be red and there it was. Now I've just got to practice a bit so I won't have those wonky bits in my cord.

May 04, 2004

A very restrained haul...

I've made it back home to California safe and sound, tired but happy. The above photo is the unintentional and oddly coordinated haul of wares I just trucked home. We had a wonderful time at Maryland Sheep and Wool, as usual. The best part of the whole shebang was that my sister and I got to meet so many fellow bloggers! It's a bit odd that you can just start chatting with someone you've actually never met, inquiring about their current projects and things, like pals picking right up after you've not seen them for awhile. For those interested in pictures of this fiber frenzy, I've added a few more photos to the Maryland photo album (just click the sidebar link). One rather funny festival thing was introducing folks by adding their blog name as an attibution. Oh yes, this is Caroline of Girlreaction, Theresa of Keyboard Biologist, Leigh of Woolflowers or BonneMarie of Chicknits...